CP to submit compliance report on probe into doc`s death

New Delhi: Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar has been ordered by a court here to file his compliance report on an another court`s order to probe afresh into the death of a doctor whose body was found in an ambulance parked inside the nursing home of another doctor.

Police had been ordered earlier by District Judge R K Gauba to probe afresh the death of private practitioner`s Akchad Biswas, whose body was found in the ambulance inside main accused Dr Ajit Gupta`s nursing home premises at Malviya Nagar on the intervening night of January 27-28, 2006.

The court had directed re-investigation on the plea of victim`s wife, who said it was a case of murder and not death due to negligence as concluded by the police. Gupta and four others were then left off for lack of evidence.

Metropolitan Magistrate Chetna Singh, to whom the case was sent by Judge Gauba to examine lapses of police probe, asked the police chief to submit the compliance report on the district judge`s order and also issued notices to Gupta and his four employees.

"File taken up as per the order dated November 26, 2012 passed by the revisionist court. As per the order, further investigation has been ordered. Let compliance report be called from the office of the Commissioner of Police," the court said.

"Notice be issued upon remaining accused persons through the SHO. Court notice be also issued to the complainant for the next date of hearing on February 26, 2013," it said.

Seeking prosecution of Gupta and his four employees, the victim`s wife had told the court in her plea that Gupta had invited Biswas for the annual party but two days later he informed her about his death.

Earlier, Judge Gauba had directed the police chief to take departmental action against all the erring officers connected with the case.

The district judge`s order had come a year after a magisterial court in November, 2011 discharged all the five accused in the case for lack of evidence. The victim`s wife had challenged the magistrate`s order.

In her plea, the victim`s wife had alleged that she had told police that the nursing home owner and others had murdered her husband.

Police had registered a murder case but had sent the dead body to her residence in West Bengal without conducting any post-mortem, she added.

She had claimed before the district judge that the accused had forged her signature on a letter, which stated that she was willing to take her husband`s body to her native place. The body was sent without post-mortem as police found nothing amiss saying her husband died of injuries from a fall after consuming excessive alcohol, she said.

Criticising the role of the investigative officer, Gauba had said, "It is clear that the investigating agency has miserably failed to make sincere efforts to uncover the entire truth. It is virtually a case of no investigation into the cause of death. In this view, a direction for further investigation deserved to be granted".

The post-mortem conducted by the West Bengal police had termed the death as homicidal.

"The manner in which an enquiry was undertaken in the meantime, as also the investigation conducted after the FIR had been registered, gives the impression that the police had already made up its mind that it was not a case of culpable homicide," the district judge had noted, while ordering re-investigation.

The district judge had said police diluted the murder charges to that of death due to negligence, which resulted in discharge of all the accused.

The judge had observed that victim`s wife had written a complaint to the commissioner of police in March, 2006.